


Physics

by Dreadmartha



Category: Intermission - Fandom, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreadmartha/pseuds/Dreadmartha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about going to visit Pickle Inspector's great aunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Physics

**Author's Note:**

> This still needs to be cleaned up, so please excuse any dodgy language or misspellings.

\----  
 **in·er·tia**  
 **noun**  /iˈnərSHə/  
A property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.  
\----  
He’s tall and thin with that off-white blonde Prospitians are known for. These aspects are usually a requirement for Droog. He knows what he likes, and it’s never been his way to deny himself something he wants.  
He doesn’t particularly like this one, but he doesn’t dislike him either.   
And he gives good head, at least.  
They’re in the back room of one of the clubs the Crew owns down on the South Side of town. The music from the stage is audible, though it’s low and throbbing, more feeling than sound. It travels up the Prospitians knees, into the long muscles in his legs, across the bowl-like curve of his pelvis, and up his spinal column into his jaw, his teeth, and the bright red tongue that peeks out of his mouth now and then, always under the black weight of Droog’s cock.   
Droog watches, sitting up and rolling his cigarette absently between his knuckles while the other man sucks and licks, working his mouth up and down and up and down.   
Droog thinks about running his fingers through that white hair, but decides against it. There’s no telling what might be in there, and in all honesty he’d rather not touch another living thing when he can avoid it.  
The man’s black eyes flick up to his face and he manages to smile, even with his mouth occupied.  
“All the way.”  
Droog’s coolness dissuades the Prospitian from smiling any more, and he simply does as he’s told with his own brand of coolness. He quits acting like he likes this and as he does the tension caused by his act dissipates. Now they’re both simply waiting for Droog, and once he comes they’ll go on about their business.  
Droog thinks this man is handsome, and that notion sits cool and wet in the pit of his stomach. He leans into his mouth, closing his eyes for a moment to try and pretend the face nestled in his lap is ugly, like everyone else in the world.  
His shoulders relax, and a warmth pours down from them into his spine, then down into his hips and he comes. The Prospitian gags, his throat closing enough to give Droog a squeeze and it’s the sort of jolt that makes him open his eyes and flinch for his gun.  
He doesn’t draw. Instead he sits back, pulling out of the Prospitian’s mouth as the other man swallows and swallows, his hand covering his mouth.   
Droog tucks himself away, stands, straightens his seams and leaves his money on the table by the door.  
He wears his hat low over his face and lights a cigarette as he exits the club and walks out into the jarring wind and silence of a Midnight City winter.   
His ears sting, then go numb. He keeps his hands in his pockets as he walks into the wind, towards his car.  
He only has to turn one corner, but in the time it takes to get there he ducks into a doorway to relight his cigarette.  
Mist blows in long grey skirts and rags through the streets, and Droog can’t be sure if it’s going to turn to rain or snow or hail. He hopes it will just dissipate, but as he climbs into the car several heavy, freezing drops hits his neck and the back of his hand.  
They splatter themselves across the windshield, but soon they freeze and when they throw themselves at the glass they fly off with tiny, sharp clak’s.  
When he pulls up outside the apartment building the hail shows no signs of letting up. He steels himself, pulls his hat down, hunches his shoulders and hurries inside. The ice pricks his back, one hitting his shoulder with enough force for him to feel its presence even as he rides the elevator up to his floor.  
Droog takes off his hat and unbuttons his coat, waiting for the elevator doors to slide open. The building is kept excessively warm at this time of year.   
He exits the elevator, walks down the hall and digs out his keys. He lets himself into the apartment, which is as warm and dark as the back room of the club.  
Droog hangs up his coat and hat, slips out of his shoes and undresses until only his boxers and undershirt stand between him and total nudity.  
He lays on the couch in the tiny living room, rolls his shoulders and waits for his spine to pop into its correct alignment. He rests his head on a worn out pillow, stuffs his hand under it, closes his eyes and listens to the silence of winter until, somehow, he wakes up.  
There’s light in the apartment. Dull, coming from behind him, from the little kitchen.   
Droog sits up, rolling his tongue over his teeth and tasting cigarette ash and his own halitosis. He stands, picks up his watch from the table by the couch. Seven thirty in the morning.  
He hears feet hissing across tile, then the soft clatter of a kettle being put over a burner. He stretches, reaching one arm behind his back, then the other, and goes to take a shower.  
He dresses, combs his hair, and cures his bad breath with bitter coffee followed by a good brushing.  
“You look nice today,” Pickle Inspector’s voice is quiet.  
“Thank you.” Droog doesn’t look up from working the clasp of his watch.   
He picks up the paper from the kitchen table, leaves his empty coffee cup in the sink, collects his hat and his coat and leaves.  
\----  
“What do you wanna do, Droog?”  
Droog looks up, raising his eyebrows.  
“What?” He asks.  
“When y’get old.” Hearts shifts his weight around, getting more comfortable in the passenger’s seat.   
“When I get old what?”  
“What do you want to do then, I just asked you that.”  
Droog looks at the warehouse they’ve been parked outside of for the last hour.  
“I don’t know.” He answers.  
“I figure I want to own some property, y’know, some big place way out in the country. Some place peaceful, like.”  
“Maybe.”  
“What about you? You want something like that?”  
“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think about it.”  
“You don’t think about it?”  
“No.”  
“Not ever? You don’t ever think about it?”  
“No.”  
“Why not?”  
Droog lights a cigarette and looks into the rearview mirror.   
“I just don’t.” He says.  
“But don’t you think it’s important? Isn’t the future important?”  
“It is. That doesn’t mean I have to think about it.”  
“It just means you should.”  
“That’s your opinion, Boxcars.”  
“Yeah and it’s the right opinion. What if something happens to Slick, what if we’re left to our own devices, what then?”  
Droog shrugs.  
“We’ll manage or we’ll die.”  
Hearts frowns at him, his mouth small in his big face. Droog thinks the proportions of the expression belittled its meaning.  
“That’s no way to live, Droog. You’re never going to be happy like that.”  
“The point of life isn’t to be happy, Boxcars.”  
“Oh no? What is it then?”  
Droog flicks his cigarette out the window, formulating his answer. He opens his mouth to speak, just as three greenish sillhouettes emerge from the warehouse.   
“There they are--” Droog and Hearts are out of the car in the second. Droog shoots the tires out from under the car the Felts are heading for, Hearts wings out them. Probably Die, from the strangled, lanky way the body falls.  
A firefight ensues. Droog ducks behind his open door, reloading his pistol. The Thompson has been jamming, he needs to have it looked at, or get a new one.   
Out of the corner of his eye he see red, and as he looks up he sees Hearts firing away, his Thompson hot and shiny and smoking, firing like it was brand new. More blood explodes out of his shoulder, but he doesn’t notice at all, just keeps pumping lead into the air between them and the Felt.  
Droog stands again, aims and fires. He misses, the green body jerking out of the way from the force of one of Hearts’s bullets.   
Something hot and white moves passed him and his ear burns with sound and pain. He tastes copper and realizes he’s grinding his teeth so hard his gums are bleeding.  
When the smoke clears his hands are still shaking.   
“How’re these fuckers so hard to kill?” Hearts walks up to the first man he shot. The man, it is Die, lifts his head. Hearts steps on his face, then pushes. Die’s face caves after a moment or two under Heart’s heel. “I mean look at this, I must’a shot him ten times and he’s just dead now!”  
Droog comes up and starts rifling through the pockets of the other two. Quarters and Sawbuck.  
“They’re in and out of time, they don’t die right away the way real people do.”  
“That’s no excuse. Why should we have to work harder to kill them, that’s my question.”  
Droog tries to find an answer to Hearts’s question in any of the pockets of the three corpses. He comes up with nothing.  
“Time doesn’t work in our favor.” Droog finally replies.  
“I’ll say.” Hearts rubs some of the blood off of his shoe onto Die’s coat. “You got anything over there?”  
“Nothing.” Droog thinks about his Thompson, and the envy that boiled up in his gut watching Hearts blasting away. He looks at Hearts’s shoulder, which is red and black and slick now. Hearts looks too.  
“Jesus Christ would you look at that.” He lifts the arm and hisses. “Fuck, shit, Mother of Christ when’d this happen?”  
Droog touches his ear. It stings in the dull, hot way a burn does.   
“You must not have been paying attention.”  
Hearts scoffs.  
“Not paying attention? Look at this, look at this fat fuck here, see those holes? I’m the one put them there, that’s where I paid my attention.”  
“Put him down, let’s get out of here.”  
“What’s the rush? You scared Fin’s going to come get us?”  
“No.”  
“If he is I’ll have this ready,” Hearts turns his Thompson card around in his fingers. Show off. “Don’t worry.”  
“Let’s just get in the car.”  
“What’s the matter? Blood on your suit?”  
“Yes.”  
Hearts shuts up after that.  
\----  
You’re not afraid of Fin.  
You’re not afraid of anyone.  
Droog looks at the ceiling, lying flat on his back on the couch that night.   
He isn’t afraid of Fin, it’s true. He’s killed and humiliated and maimed him enough times to be entirely unimpressed by whatever he does.   
He closes his eyes and listens for silence.  
He hears movement in the little apartment’s bedroom. Sheets rustling, springs squeaking, a grumble and finally the click of a light going on.   
According to Fin it was written somewhere in stone that Pickle Inspector would sit up and turn the light on at this very moment.   
Droog isn’t sure he disagrees.   
He hears more rustling, more springs complaining.   
He can hear Pickle Inspector saying something to himself, a few vowels buried under a sigh. The walls are paper thin. He lays there listening as the floorboards creak under Pickle Inspector’s weight, then fall silent. In his mind’s eye Droog can see him standing in the little bedroom, shivering just a little in the dark, naked with his skin still warm from the covers.   
He hears the floorboards creak again, Pickle Inspector whimpering something, and then silence for a while until he hears the hot gliding of skin on skin, followed by a moan from the Inspector.   
The bedsprings protest as a body flops on top of them, and the gliding, smacking sound picks up tempo, faster and faster as Pickle Inspector’s voice is muffled by his palm.  
There’s a high pitched whimper, then very soft rustling and silence.  
Droog almost opens his eyes, almost sits up, almost goes and climbs in beside the Inspector.   
Why not? Why doesn’t he just go into the bedroom? Even if it’s just to hear him scream, just to feel his skin break under Droog’s teeth.   
He thinks of the Inspector’s clammy hands, his big wet eyes and the way he tries to press his face into the side of Droog’s neck.  
He remembers sitting with the Inspector in the morning, having woken up beside him, drinking his coffee and reading the paper in silence. He remembers sitting in a private box way above the stage, leaning into the Inspector’s ear and whispering the translations to Italian opera. The time he used to spend with his arms around the Inspector, his ear pressed against the other man’s bare back as he listened to the last of his moans, almost able to see those big lungs working in that narrow chest.   
But there again are the clammy hands, the quiet, desperate, soggy devotion and those big black eyes. Even when Droog climbed on top of him, deaf to his pleading, biting and squeezing and pulling him around while the Inspector begged for him not to do it, not like this, not tonight, those big black eyes would never change. Never look at him and hate him, never accuse him of anything, never acknowledge the evil that boiled up in him and spilled over onto the Inspector.  
Droog lays there, remembering the way one morning his skin had crawled under the Inspector’s fingers. The way he had felt sick when lips touched his temple, and how he had relegated himself to the couch ever since.  
How long has it been?  
He can’t quite remember.  
He waits for the moment when he’ll wake up in the morning, only to lay there on the couch until he hears the Inspector get up a few minutes shy of seven. The detective starts making tea, and Droog gets up and walks into the kitchen.  
His limbs are stiff and heavy. His fingers feel dry and sandy. Rather than attempt to make his coffee, he sits and watches the Inspector.   
Pickle Inspector sneaks around as quietly as he usually does. He’s pulled on a shirt that’s too big for him, meaning it covers the nudity he enjoyed in bed. He doesn’t look at Droog, doesn’t seem to notice him at all until the tea’s brewed and he’s got his cup. His hands wrap around it, huge and spidery, his pale skin reddening as it drinks up the warmth from the glass.   
He sits across from Droog, sipping quietly and looking down at the table.  
All of his bruises, or at least all of the bruises Droog remembers, have healed. He caught a glimpse of a few purple and yellow spots on his legs, no doubt from misstepping and banging into doorframes or coffee tables. But on his neck, Droog sees, on his shoulders and on the shell of his ear there’s nothing but soft white skin.  
Unbroken, unbruised, untouched.   
Pickle Inspector’s body has recovering from his time with Droog.   
Suddenly the whole apartment is alive with the feeling that was continually slipping just out of Droog’s reach.  
He doesn’t belong here anymore.  
Droog opens his mouth to speak.  
“Y-Yesterday, uhm--” Pickle Inspector puts his tea down, rubbing his hands together and eying the tabletop. “Mmmy gr-great aunt  called. She, uh, sh-she’s. She w-wants, she would like to, she’d like me to visit her. For, for us to visit her.” His eyes flick up to Droog’s face. “Soon. If that’s a-alright. Perhaps, perhaps this weekend?”   
Droog closes his eyes and has to open them quickly, to keep from nodding off then and there. Pickle Inspector stares at him, his fingers tangled together on the tabletop. Droog nods, then raises a hand to his mouth and clears his throat.  
“Alright.”  
Pickle Inspector smiles, briefly, before he slips out of his chair.  
“W-would you like me to mmmake some coffee?”  
“Alright.”  
\----  
Droog expected Pickle Inspector would insist, as much as Pickle Inspector could insist, that they share a bed again for the rest of the week. He expected Pickle Inspector to beg him not to leaving any bruises anywhere his great aunt might see. He expected, at the very least, for his coffee to be waiting for him the next morning.  
The morning before their visit, he gets up from the couch, showers, dresses, makes his coffee, gets the paper and leaves for work.  
He’s not sure what he should expect anymore, what he has reason to expect. Pickle Inspector has never talked much about his family. For all Droog knew he was an orphan. Now, suddenly, he has family to visit.  
Maybe he should have asked about that. Maybe he still can.   
He doesn’t even know where they’re going, or how they’ll get there. That thought leaves him feeling restless. He balls his fists all day, unclenching them slowly, feeling his bones creak under his skin, then curl up quietly again.  
He gets home late. His first thought is to go into the bedroom, climb into bed and, if the Inspector’s still awake, leave a few bruises.   
But coming home to the silence and the darkness, the obnoxious heat after the bitter cold outside, Droog makes it as far as the couch before he shuts down completely.  
He wakes up early the next morning, itching for a shower.  
Under the hot water he comes alive, starts thinking about the day, and wonders how long a drive he’s in for. He should have asked about that. It’s too late now.  
He dresses and makes his coffee before Pickle Inspector is up.   
He drinks sitting by the one window that looks out over the street. Everything’s covered in a grey white layer of snow. There’s pools and strips of black in the street, which glow green or red in the light of a traffic signal. Mostly, though, they stay black.   
The sliver of sky he can see from the window is gunmetal grey. Droog checks the clock periodically, to see how much longer he has to wait before the Inspector would inevitably wake up.   
The sky was still dark at six thirty, when he hears the floorboards in the bedroom start to complain under the Inspector’s weight.  
Pickle Inspector doesn’t shuffle immediately into the kitchen. Droog hears the shower start, followed by an uptempo rendition of Pickle Inspector’s usual morning pitterpatter.  
The Inspector finally stumbles into the kitchen, his hair poorly combed.  
“Ah--oh! You’re, you’re awake. G-good, we, we’ll need to leave soon, uhm, actually, in the, in the next ten minute I think--” he clams up suddenly, then blows out a short breath. “If that’s alright.”  
Droog nods, putting his coffee cup in the sink.  
“She, uh, she’d like us, uhm. She s-said we sh-should st-stay the night.”   
Droog looks at him, then nods again.  
“I’ll pack a bag.”  
“Y-yes, uhm. Yes, alright, I--I should have mentioned, I’m sorry.”  
Droog walks around him and puts together an overnight bag. He wishes, absently, that he’d been able to take care of this earlier. But everything feels strange and distance this morning. He packs, remembering little things more out of muscle memory than active thought.  
“You know the way there, right?”  
“Y-yes, uh, it’s, you just get on the highway and head, uh, west and then you turn--”  
“Where? What exit?”  
“I--I’ll know it when I see it.”  
“What exit is it?”  
“S-sixty, I think?”  
Droog sighs through his nose.  
“Make yourself some tea. You can’t fall asleep while we’re on the road.”  
“I’ll be fine, I’m fine, t-tea would take too long. Are you ready? I mean, it’s just, it’s a l-long way, we sh-should go soon.”  
“Give me a minute.”  
“Ah, s-sorry.”  
“I assume you’re already ready.”  
“Uhm. Yes.”  
“Good.”  
Droog zips up his bag. He looks at Pickle Inspector.  
“Your shirt’s inside out.”  
“Is--is it?” He fidgets, then finds a seams on his shoulder. “Oh, ah,” he looks at Droog, then looks down and pulls his shirt off, hurrying to turn it right-side-out and get it back on.  
Droog barely recognizes him without his bruises.   
He shifts his wait for one foot to the other, then reaches into his breast pocket for a cigarette. He lights it as Pickle Inspector puts the last of his buttons through the wrong holes.   
“Ready?” He fiddles with his cuffs, unbuttoning one absently. Droog takes his wrist and fixes his cuffs. Pickle Inspector takes his hand back when Droog is done, looking down. “Ready?” He asks softly.  
“Alright. Let’s go.”  
Pickle Inspector’s bag is stuffed to the point that Droog can see a pair of socks sticking out at one end.   
How long are you staying there? Droog thinks, as Pickle Inspector shuffles around, turning out the lights in the apartment and bundling up in his coat, scarf, and gloves. Droog takes Pickle Inspector’s hat from its place on the coat tree, just as Pickle Inspector himself is hustling out the door.   
Droog holds his hat out to him.  
“Oh, I forgot--”  
“You usually do.”  
Pickle Inspector takes the hat gingerly.  
“Thank you.”  
They go down to the street and the car without another word. Droog puts the bags in the trunk, Pickle Inspector slips into the passenger’s side without complaint. Droog knows that the trunk of him car makes Pickle Inspector uncomfortable, and that he should consider simply putting the bags in the back seat, where at least Pickle Inspector’s imagination won’t cook up a blood stain for him to find on his socks.  
But he closes the trunk by the time he completes that thought, and thinks no more of it as he gets into the front seat and revs the engine.   
“Just get onto the highway, you said.”  
“Yes, h-headed west.”  
Droog hums, putting the car in reverse and looking over his shoulder at the traffic. A few people drive cautiously over the grey slush in the street. He waits, then pulls out.  
“Are you cold?”  
Pickle Inspector looks ridiculous, bundled up in his mis-buttoned shirt, his sweater, big coat, workman’s gloves, his too-small hat pulled down low on his head, and his face buried in the thick scarf they used to wear together. Droog remembers the scratchiness of the wool on his cheek, the gentle pressure of Pickle Inspector’s shoulder against his, the way they had to lean towards each other and the way he started to forget whose breath was whose, and how to be scared and threatened by the Inspector’s closeness.  
Pickle Inspector shakes his head, but Droog makes the executive decision to turn the heat on anyway.  
The result is a sleeping Inspector within three miles.  
Droog reaches into the glove compartment while they’re still in the city and pulls out a map of the surrounding area.   
Heading west, the nearest exit sixty is roughly four hours away, at highway speed.  
He folds the map up, stows it where he can easily reach it again, and makes a pact with himself not to wake Pickle Inspector until it’s unavoidable.   
\----  
“Oh, we’re, we’re here already.”  
“I told you not to go to sleep.”  
“Sorry, I,” he sits up, fighting with his scarf and hat and gloves. “I didn’t, I g-guess I didn’t realize h-how tired I was.”  
“Keep an eye out for the turn.”  
“It’s, it’s coming up. Exit, it’s exit sixty, or, uh, sixty-one. Ah. Maybe, uhm, fifty-eight.”  
“We passed fifty-eight two miles ago.”  
“Oh--”  
“Was that our exit?”  
“I d-don’t know--”  
“Was it our exit?”  
“I don’t--sixty, r-right there, th-that’s it.”  
“You’re sure.”  
“Yes, yes I’m sure. I--I know how to g-get there, Droog.” Pickle Inspector’s voice low and quick when he says Droog’s name.  
“Good.”  
Droog turns onto the exit and for a long time they cruise down a two lane street with black, leafless trees on either side.   
The road winds and seems to go on forever.  
“Inspector.” Droog’s voice is uneasy, threatened, threatening.  
“N-no, this is, this is the right way. It is.”  
Droog considers making a U-turn and heading back to the highway. He glances at Pickle Inspector, who’s sitting up now, free of his gloves, scarf and hat, staring out at the road.  
“This is it,” he murmurs, his nose red and his cheeks rosy. There’s white grey light coming in from the sky, which is light now, a wash of soft, hazy clouds, all threatening snow. The lighting makes Pickle Inspector seem more red in the face, makes his eyes more watery, his hair curlier.  
Droog thinks, for a moment, that he looks almost handsome.   
Droog gives him a grace period of one more mile, and just in time the trees open up to reveal a small town built around the two lane.   
“Alright, uh, nnnow, follow this road up the hill and then, then there’ll be a, an uhm, a fork and you go to the right there, and then just, just follow that.”  
Droog looks at the corrugated roofs of the single story shacks on either side. He glimpses a gutted farmhouse, chipping red paint dusted with snow, making the whole thing look like a skinned, freshly blow open ribcage.   
If this is where your family is, he thinks, why even bother with them?  
He makes it up the hill, turns right, and drives through farmland, alongside empty white fields.  
“Are we anywhere near a gas station?”  
“Th-there’s one, b-back in town.”  
“That place looked like it ran out of gas in the forties.”  
“W-well th-they mmmostly, it’s uh, sort of a, uhm, g-general store, but I’m s-sure you, they must have g-gasoline.”  
Droog looks at the needle by the steering column.  
“Let’s find out.”  
He turns back towards ‘town’ and pulls into the gas station, in front of one of the antique pumps. Droog puts his hat on as he gets out of the car, keeping an eye out for locals. No one is outside, and he resents the thought of going inside, where there will certainly be someone.   
“D-do you mmind if I c-come in with you?” Pickle Inspector is clutching his hat in his hands, his big scarf hanging heavily across his shoulders.   
No, if we’re seen together we’ll be lynched out here, you’re not safe here, you stand out too much, you can’t take care of yourself, these people will kill you.  
Droog pulls out a cigarette, and nods something like approval.  
Pickle Inspector picks his way through the two inches of snow on the ground into the tiny store behind the pumps. The bells over the door jangle as he enters, and he vanishes behind an old advertisement for Kent cigarettes. 

‘MORE SCIENTISTS AND EDUCATORS SMOKE KENT

with the Micronite Filter than any other cigarette!’

Droog looks at the weak chinned yokel on the poster, then down at his own cigarette. He tosses it into the snow, spits and makes sure the car is locked before he heads into the store.  
The bells jangle, and thankfully that’s the only noise there is in this place. There’s a woman behind the counter, and rows upon rows of cigarette cartons behind her. An old register sits by a brightly colored display of fifty cent, seventy-five cent, one dollar, five dollar, ten dollar lotto tickets.   
Pickle Inspector is the only other person in the store, hunched and still sticking out by the far wall. Droog can see a coffee pot with a black rim and handle, just next to the Inspector. He gets his hopes up for decent coffee, and forgets to dash them as he pays for gas, a pack of Marlboros (since they don’t have Pall Malls or Camels), and a cup of coffee for himself.   
The woman hands him a styrofoam cup and tells him the gas will be ready for him when he gets back outside.   
Pickle Inspector is fiddling with his own styrofoam cup, which looks like it’s full of steaming water. As Droog comes over the detective pulls a small cardboard box from his pocket, lifts a triangular tea bag from inside it, and plops it into the water.  
“Always prepared.” Droog observes.  
“It’s,” Pickle Inspector looks at his little box of teabags, “Convenient.”   
Droog pours himself some coffee from the black rimmed pot.  
“Where are we, Inspector?”  
“Here? This is Taloule.”   
“You mean Talula.”  
He shakes his head, poking a thin red straw into his cup.   
“T-Taloule. That’s the name.”  
Droog nods enough to signify he’s heard, then takes a sip of his coffee.  
To it’s credit, it’s strong.   
He swallows, feeling it burn its bitter way across his teeth and down his throat.   
It will keep him awake, at least.  
He checks his watch, then turns back to look at the car through the windows in the front.   
“We’ll need a map of the area.”  
“No, that’s alright.” Pickle Inspector sounds strangely sure of himself. “It’s not much longer, now.”  
Droog looks at his watch again.  
“If it’s not much longer why did we have to leave at seven in the morning?”  
Pickle Inspector puts his tea down, rubbing his hands together.   
“Sh-she said to get there e-early ah-afternoon.”  
“We’ve almost missed the early part of it. How much longer to we have to go?”  
Pickle Inspector shrugs.   
“T-ten, fifteen mmmiles?”   
Droog takes another sip of coffee, looking at Pickle Inspector’s eyes, though they refuse to roll up and meet his.  
“Good thing I stopped to get gas.”  
Pickle Inspector nods, grabbing up his tea again and swallowing hard. He clamps a hand over the top of his cup.  
“We can go whenever you want.” He looks Droog in the face, tired and red nosed and greenish in the florescent lights.   
Droog takes another sip of his coffee, before leading the way outside. He hears Pickle Inspector thank the woman behind the counter, while he jerks the door open and the bells cut out most of what the Inspector says.   
Droog pumps the gas and resists the urge to smoke for all he’s worth. Pickle Inspector hunkers down in the car and doesn’t make a sound. When Droog climbs back in and they pull off with a full tank, he watches the road and holds his tea up to his mouth. He never drinks it.  
They pull back onto the road along the fields, and Droog cruises by farmland, waiting for Pickle Inspector to murmur out the next snippet of the directions.  
He tries to take note of the miles going by, but in the end the length of country miles escapes him, and it’s only when the Inspector points to a path that branches off of the road that he realizes how far they’ve gone.   
The path is smooth, smoother than the country road. Droog watches as they’re surrounded, again, by black trees, and how they open up again onto a clearing at the center of which sits an enormous Antebellum mansion.   
He blinks, driving up to it slowly and taking in the pine trees growing on either side, the semi-circle driveway he’s already creeping along, and the pillars and verandas that encircle the whole thing.   
He looks for a plaque announcing this as some kind of retirement home, and finds nothing of the sort.   
The whole thing is eggshell white, with ivy growing thick and green all around it. There are no branches of it on the walls, or even the lattice work under the big front porch. The roof is the same dark, dark green as the ivy far below, and the front door and the shutters on the big windows.   
As Droog finally pulls up in front of the porch he swallows hard, realizing that his mouth is watering.   
\----  
 **force**  
 **noun**  /fôrs/  
An influence tending to change the motion of a body or produce motion or stress in a stationary body.  
\----  
She has an impressive overbite, and when she smiles, which is often, she cannot be called pretty. Droog supposes that her wealth and her intelligence, both of which were considerable, are what made her an object of desire in her day.   
The Inspector’s great aunt was not, as Droog had been expecting, the type of woman who was given to spearheading the affairs on her sizable estate. Rather, she seems utterly unconcerned with anything that didn’t have to do with the town of Taloule, her gardens, and her grandnephew.   
A maid showed them into the parlor, where Droog admired the lights that hung down from the high ceilings enough and in such numbers that the whole room was well lit, making it all look more spotless. He took in the silk tablecloths, the dark redwood furniture, and the heady smell that had tantalized him since before he could remember.   
Finally he was here, he thought at the time, at the heart of old money.   
How long had he strived for this? How long had he fought with his world, his people, his very reflection, always trying to be more Angolo, more American, paler and lighter with those square jaws and all that cash.  
And here he was, at last. It had fallen into his lap as easily as Pickle Inspector had tripped into his life.   
He couldn’t believe it.  
Pickle Inspector asked after his great aunt, and very shortly they were brought into the sunny corner of the house she has elected to spend the early afternoon in.   
Pickle Inspector, upon seeing her, brightens up considerably. Droog, straining to keep his eyes from wandering, fighting to make a good impression and not melt at the thought of, dare he dream, owning all this, barely registers the Inspector’s change of mood.  
Halcyon Sponsor is sitting by the window, wrapped up in an Indian shawl, looking at the snow on the roses not far from her window seat.  
When she hears the maid enter she turns and, upon seeing her grandnewphew, sits up and throws her arms out. The shawl falls away from her, exposing a small machine to which a set of tubes running out of her nose attach.  
Droog is thrown by how young Pickle Inspector suddenly seems. The Inspector hurries to her side, wrapping his arms around her and grinning like a little boy.   
Droog feels himself standing alone and unrecognized in the perfect, Prospitian, eggshell house. He feels how dark his skin looks, how slick his hair is, how broad and out of place he is here.   
Sponsor and the Inspector talk or laugh for a moment, it’s hard to tell which. Then she looks up at Droog, running one of her hands through the Inspector’s hair and combing it with her fingers.   
The Inspector doesn’t look up from under her hand as she waves at Droog a speaks with the voice of a tall woman who’s been told since childhood that she’s important.  
“And you must be Droog. Come in, sit down, you must be tired too. Have something to drink, Amy did you ask if they wanted something drink?”  
“Yes ma’am.”  
“Ma’am,” Droog starts.  
“Come sit, come sit. You look tired, you’ve been driving all day. Amy, go get some coffee for them, if you don’t mind.”  
“Ma’am, we’re fine. Thank you, though.”  
“W-well,” Pickle Inspector takes his aunt’s hand from his hair and smiles at her, sheepish and a little coy in a way Droog hasn’t seen in a long time. “I c-could use some water, actually.”  
“Right away, sir.” The maid, Amy, zips off and suddenly Droog is truly alone with these people.  
In the split second it takes to register that, he sees them both as a united force against him, against his lifelong dreams of wealth and prosperity and recognition of his efforts to be refined. This is his one chance, he can’t let two Prospitians get in his way.   
“Droog?” Pickle Inspector’s voice is quiet, clipped as it was before. “Come sit.”  
Droog grinds the phrase ‘I prefer to stand,’ between his teeth, and comes over to the little couch they’re both perched on. They lean in towards each other.  
Droog sits beside Pickle Inspector, watching the two of them and eying the little machine beside Sponsor. Some kind of medical contraption. He can’t tell what it does at a glance. He can only assume that it was important.   
“Droog,” Pickle Inspector clears his throat, holding a hand out to his relative. “this is my great aunt, Halcyon Sponsor.”  
She holds out a hand and Droog springs to shake it. He regrets the gesture immediately, thinking it too forceful, too hungry. She doesn’t seem to notice as she smiles, showing her confident overbite and saying,  
“PI’s told me all about you, Mr. Droog, it’s wonderful to finally get a look at you.”  
Droog nods, his throat dry. He clears it, taking his hand back.   
“He’s told me a few things about you as well.”  
“Oh don’t make me laugh! He hasn’t told you anything, have you PI?”  
The Inspector blushes, turning red again from the tip of his chin to the top of his forehead. Sponsor laughs.  
“He doesn’t like to tell people, he gets a little scared, you know. But that’s fine, that’s fine. In fact it’s better than fine,” she takes hold of the Inspector’s ear, giving it a little tug, “it’s good to know somebody’s worrying. If nobody worried the world would just fall right apart.”  
The Inspector smiles, one of his few relaxed smiles.   
Droog feels a powerful need in the pit of his stomach to get away from this scene, to hurry while these two were distracted and rub the house blind, or simply get back in the car and flee the weight of having his dream so close he can reach out and touch its papery old skin.   
“Ah, excuse me,” He reaches into his suit jacket and fumbles with his cigarette case.   
“Oh you smoke?” Sponsor starts, watching him stand up from the couch. “Well I’m sorry but you can’t smoke in the house, it gets into the curtains and rugs and things. Go out on the porch there, right just the way you came in, through the parlor, and you can smoke to your heart’s content.” She smiles up at him again.   
Droog excuses himself to smoke himself hoarse on the porch.  
Sponsor and the Inspector talk and laugh quietly, eventually just touching each other’s shoulders or arms, Sponsor keeping a firm grip on him while the Inspector is careful to find the places he remembers holding onto her when he was very young. Finally, he holds her thumb in his hand, with the pad pressed into his palm.   
He scoots closer to her on the couch, smiling shyly even in the presence of the woman that raised him. She smiles too, closed mouth, her eyes crinkling as she takes her free hand and points out the window.   
“See there?” She says. “That’s why I wanted you to get here early.”  
In the afternoon sun the roses all burn bright red against the white snow around them. They gleam and shiny with snowflakes, dew, and their thorny stems stand out bright and beautiful, pink tipped and dangerous but lush and healthy now, in the dead of winter.   
“Have you ever seen something like that? Roses, at this time of year.”  
Pickle Inspector nods, smiling tiredly.   
“They say it’s going the snow tonight, I wanted you to see those roses before they all freeze. We’ve brought some inside but it just can’t compare to that.”  
He nods again, looking up at her.   
“Aunt Hal,” he says.   
“Hmm?”  
He leans his head on her shoulder, breathing in her familiar perfume and taking in the unfamiliar sight of the oxygen tube leading down to the little machine on the other side of her.  
“I missed you so much.”   
He leans against her, and feels fingers combing through his hair again. He sighed, his breath hitching halfway through and she hushes him.  
\----  
“W-we d-don’t have to, i-if you don’t w-want to.”   
“It’s one night, Inspector. We can manage.”  
“There’s room, Droog, i-if that’s what you want, y-you can, or I can, I can mmmove.”  
That has occurred to Droog, but it’s a risk he’s not willing to take. Sharing a bedroom with the Inspector again is admittedly a bizarre concept. But, he reminds himself, that does not mean that they have to share the bed. In the room that’s already been made up for them, there’s a couch that could easily see one of them through the night.   
And requesting another room would only point out how distant they had become. If there is one thing Droog doesn’t want to have Halcyon Sponsor know about, it is the decline in his relationship with her grandnephew.   
“It will be fine, Inspector. I’ll take the couch.”  
The Inspector looks all around, mostly at the floor, and then nods.  
“Alright.”  
It does snow that night. It snows so hard the house creaks and trembles in the wind, cold creeps in through the shuttered windows and Pickle Inspector lies awake, staring into the darkness around him and trying to remember when he was a little boy here, spending long summer days with his great aunt before going back to boarding school. Days when he was happy and the world was soft and warm.  
He hears Droog’s breathing, steady and unperturbed by the storm outside.   
He shivers, remembering how warm Droog used to be.  
When morning and the heavy silence of snow falling, rather than a blizzard raging, descends, Pickle Inspector can’t tell if he slept at all the night before.   
He tries not to think about it.  
\----  
Droog stands on the front porch, watching the snow as it builds higher and higher, hugging the sides of his car and caked on the roof.   
He blows smoke out into the wind, flicks ash after it and thinks about being stuck here for another night.   
No, he tells himself, it wouldn’t be so bad. He could tell Pickle Inspector to take the couch, and then dig the car out early the next morning. Simple.  
But then he thinks of how far away the night is, and how he’ll have to sit through seeing the Inspector smile and laugh with his aunt, another day of waiting for either of them to notice him, hand over the deeds to everything they owned, and wish him well. Another day of feeling hungry and desperate for money and his hometown.   
He looks at the car, with the snow almost to the windows, and turns back inside.  
The house is quiet, and even as his shoes mark out his journey deeper inside the whole place seems still and tomblike.  
The home of a dying woman.  
Droog finds his way to the kitchen. There’s a woman there, an early riser like Droog himself.  
“Can I get you something?”  
“I’ll just make myself some coffee.”  
“There’s a pot ready in the dining room. I just made it fresh. Milk and sugar too.”  
“You don’t know how I like it.”  
Droog is cut short by the look the woman gives him. Knowing, uninsulting, even disappointed in him.  
“That’s not the point.” She says. “Coffee’s already made.”  
“Excuse me.”  
He slips out of the kitchen and hides in the dining room.  
That’s right, that’s right that’s what servants are for. They’re people who do the things you don’t want to. They do everything for you. Even if you’d prefer to do it yourself it’s frowned upon to be rich and make your own coffee in the morning.  
He pours himself a cup, trying not to think about how fine and shiny the pot is, and how his fingerprints smudge its glossy surface.  
“Beholden.”  
Droog turns to find Halcyon Sponsor walking into the dining room, wheeling her strange little device along after her.  
“That’s what you are when you’ve got money. Beholden. You own the money as much as it owns you.”  
She walks the length of the room, comes up beside Droog and pours herself a cup of coffee.  
“Good morning, Droog.”  
“Good morning.” He sounds hoarse, even to himself.  
“Of course it’s better than not having money,” she raises her eyebrows as she says it, the rest of her face staying very serious. “Let’s not mince words. Wealth just comes with its own problems, you know.”  
He nods, glancing at the table, his legs sore from having to sleep balled up on the couch.  
“I can imagine.”  
She nods.  
“I hope it all isn’t too jarring for you.”  
He looks at her, grinding his teeth behind his lips. Jarring as the contrast of city to country, curly blonde hair to oily black, Prospitian white to Dersite black?  
“There are just so many rules. It’s different from life in the city.”  
“I can imagine.” He sips his coffee. It’s weak.  
“PI is still a late riser, I see.” She smiles graciously.  
“Yes, he is.” Droog racks his brain for a concrete memory of Pickle Inspector sleeping at all. The closest he comes is remembering earlier, not an hour before now, when he got up and glanced at the curled up form underneath thick comforters.   
“He always was, I could never say why. His father, when he was little, would always be up bright and early. It’s a family trait, really. Maybe his mother’s people liked to sleep in, I’m not sure, but as long as I’ve known him PI has enjoyed a good long sleep.”  
“Hm.”  
“I take it you’re more in the habit of getting an early start.”  
“I am.”  
“I think it’s a good habit to keep, really. Sleep too much and you’ll just lose the whole day. Don’t you think so?”  
“I, uh,” he takes another sip of his coffee. “I like the early morning.”  
“I couldn’t agree more.” She turns to the table. “Let’s sit. Do you like to have breakfast right away, Droog?”  
He looks for an answer that doesn’t betray the fact that he’d rather not have to eat at all.  
“No, usually I just have coffee.”  
“You know I’m the same way. I start the day with my coffee and then, around nine I think it’s time for breakfast. That’s the thing about waking up early, you’ve got so much more time to spread your day out.”  
He nods, sitting across from her.  
“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”  
He shakes his head.  
“How long have you and PI been together? He only mentioned you recently, though he assured me you’ve known each other for quite some time.”  
Droog swallows. How recently does she mean? How long has he been sleeping on the couch? How much has Pickle Inspector told her? Why would he introduce Droog to his aunt now, of all times?  
“It’s been,” he searches for a number and comes up with nothing. “We’ve known each other for some time, yes.”  
She smiles.  
“When he writes about you, one can tell how fond he is of you.”  
Droog clears his throat.  
“I’m not sure how much he’s told you.”  
“Oh, this and that. I don’t like to press him, you know how he gets when you pressure him.”  
Scared, shaky, worrisome, unresponsive? Droog can’t pick one word for it.  
“Of course.” He says.  
“But I want you to know, Droog. I want you to know that I’m glad he’s got someone with him. He needs people, you know.”  
Droog nods, his fingers creaking as he curls and uncurls his fist.  
Halcyon Sponsor turns to the door of the dining room and smiles.  
“Speak of the devil!”  
Droog looks as well, finding Pickle Inspector in the doorway. His hair is mussed and his buttons are mismatched.   
He wonders what it means to need people.  
\----  
“I’m afraid you boys might be stuck.”  
It’s snowed all day, and now in the country darkness that surrounds them there are still big feathers of snow falling.  
Droog shudders, and Pickle Inspector isn’t sure what he should do. In theory he should calm Droog down, help make him feel at least a little bit at home, and maybe hide the fact that he packed extra clothing for himself in the hopes that he would get the chance to stay more than a day and a half with his aunt.   
He should give up the bed for the night, be supportive and try to make this easier on Droog.  
He knows Droog must be thinking of work, of having to drive home at least a day later than he thought he would, of having to be the odd one out for another twenty-four hours.  
He had hoped that Droog would turn him down when he first mentioned the visit, that he would have to make his own way out here and then maybe stay. Maybe just a few days, maybe forever.  
He looks at Droog and thinks about telling him all these things. Telling him that he loves him so much. Telling him he doesn’t understand what’s wrong with them.  
“They won’t clear those farm roads until tomorrow at the earliest.”  
He thinks of asking his aunt to place a call, get the road out to the highway cleared and then it would all be better, they could go back home and Droog would be in his element again and everything would be better.  
Droog looks at him sharply, as if he’s heard all this.   
Pickle Inspector touches his lips just to be sure he isn’t mumbling to himself. They’re still.  
“We’ll manage.” Droog sits back as much as his perfect posture will let him, looking away from Pickle Inspector.  
“That’s very good of you.” Halcyon Sponsor smiles, wrapped in her shawl again. Pickle Inspector, on que, turns and gives her a small smile and a nod. “You boys are always welcome here, you know.”  
“Thank you, aunt Hal.”  
Not long after that Sponsor goes off to bed, and because they’ve nothing better to do, so do Pickle Inspector and Droog.   
Droog closes the bedroom door behind them.  
“D-do you want th-the bed?” Pickle Inspector looks over at him, standing so Droog as a straight path between himself and the bed.  
“No.”  
“It’s nnnothing, really, I, I w-want you to be c-comfortable.”  
“No, Inspector.”  
“D-Droog please take it, I--I want you to have it.”  
“Drop it, Inspector.”  
The Inspector looks away as Droog starts undressing. He fiddles with his shirt, undoing a few buttons before abandoning the idea altogether.  
“I just want you to be happy.” His breath catches on the last syllable and he breathes out hot air, trying to keep the murmur in his chest from rising into his throat as a sob.  
“I am happy.”  
Pickle Inspector looks at him, sitting on the couch he plans to sleep on, his suit jacket hangs over one arm. He is taking off his shoes. Pickle Inspector shakes his head, crushing his wet eyes under his fingers.  
“No! No you’re n-not! D-don’t s-say you are--please please don’t, you’re not you’re not you’re not!”  
His breath hitches again and he whimpers, mopping at his face and covering his mouth as he squeaks and chews down a sob. The world is blurry as he looks back at Droog.  
He hasn’t gotten up to come grab Pickle Inspector and beat or kiss his tears away. He puts his shoe down, then removes the other one.  
“Calm down, Inspector.”  
Pickle Inspector grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes, sputtering.  
“Coming here was a bad, bad idea, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I never should’ve, I shouldn’t’ve, y-you, I--” he pants, huffing and puffing to try and keep down the lump in his throat.  
Droog unties his tie and hangs it over the arm by his jacket.  
He rakes his fingers through his hair and watches Pickle Inspector stand there trembling. His fingertips are bony white where he presses them into his hollow cheeks, trying to disguise the sounds of his own crying.  
Droog tries to imagine how this weepy little man could possibly need him.   
Pickle Inspector’s voice rises, then falters and he holds still for a long moment, before taking his hand from his mouth and wiping his eyes on the back of his wrist.  
“Y-you d-don’t touch mmme anymore,” he says. “You don’t even l-look at me anymore.” His breathing is hard and shallow. “Why do you let me stay if you don’t w-want me anymore?”  
Droog thinks he should get up and at least touch his shoulders. But they’re shaking and he doesn’t want to touch the wet, shuddering rest of him.  
He remains seated, looking at Pickle Inspector.   
“Ah-aren’t you going to t-talk to me?”  
He looks away.  
“Droog please, I just--I just w-want you to be happy. I just want you to be h--”  
“Why?”  
“What?”  
“Why do you want me to be happy?”  
“Be-because--because I l-love you.”   
He stands there shaking in the dark and the cold. Droog looks over at him for a moment, looking him up and down. Pickle Inspector shivers and tries to look back, but can’t meet Droog’s eyes.  
Droog looks away again, then lays down on the couch and rests his head on a pillow. He reaches for the lamp beside the couch and turns it off.  
He hears Pickle Inspector yelp as the darkness surrounds them.  
\----  
Pickle Inspector isn’t in bed when he wakes up.   
He’s not in the room at all.  
Droog can’t find him.  
He thinks he should find Sponsor. Where else would Pickle Inspector be but with his aunt? He gets up and looks around.  
Where else?  
Anywhere else.  
How many times has he found Pickle Inspector stuck behind couches or tucked away in crawl spaces.   
He wants privacy.  
He wants people.  
He wants privacy.  
He wants people.  
He just wants Droog to be happy.  
Droog looks for clarity under a jet of hot water in the bathroom. He doesn’t find it there and so he looks for it in a cup of weak coffee. In the silk tablecloths, the find furniture, the big windows, the trimmed ivy, the smell of money.  
At noon he finds himself sitting in a room off the parlor, wishing he could find it in him to go upstairs and get his gun.  
He’d shoot the cook first, then that maid, the old woman, and if Pickle Inspector surfaces in all the screaming he’d shoot him too.  
Droog isn’t sure if he’d shoot himself after all that.  
He just doesn’t know anymore.  
“Aren’t you cold, Droog?”  
He looks up to find Halcyon Sponsor and her wheeled device coming towards him.  
“No. I don’t get cold.”  
She pulls her shawl tighter around her shoulders.  
“You’re lucky.”  
She comes and sits in the chair nearest him, wheeling the little device over beside her.  
Halcyon Sponsor is taller than Droog when they’re both seated. She looks over at him, her posture straight and ladylike. He thinks she looks like an illustration from an etiquette book until she speaks.  
“I’m dying, Droog.”  
It hangs in the air for a long time before she nods briefly and continues.  
“We all know it. It’s only a matter of time before this little thing,” she points to the contraption on the floor, “gives out. Then I won’t be able to leave my bed. And when that happens, well,” she shrugs, “that will just be that.”  
Droog swallows, trying to find something to fill the silence while she picks a bit of fuzz from her shawl.  
“That’s why I think it’s important that PI has someone. He needs people, you know. Without them he just can’t get by. No one can, really. But when I’m gone he’s going to need someone to keep him grounded. I hate to think of what he’d do to himself if no one was around then.” She frowns for the first time since Droog’s met her. “I want there to be someone to look after him when I’m gone. Someone to take care of him, make him happy.”  
Happy, Droog thinks. Happy. What in god’s name does happy mean?  
“I don’t ask much, Droog. Just give him something to fill his day. You know how he can get.”  
You ask far, far too much. We’re falling apart, there’s nothing there anymore, how can you ask me to do this you don’t even know me.  
“He loves you. Just let him love you and he’ll be fine.”  
Droog’s gut tells him to get the gun, to end all of this here and now.  
He feels eyes on him. He looks at Sponsor.  
“He needs you.”  
She points to the window behind him.   
He turns and follows her finger.  
Outside he ses the tall, thin form of Pickle Inspector, sitting hunched in the fresh snow.  
Droog gets up, pulls on his coat and walks around the house to wear Pickle Inspector is sitting.   
As he comes up behind him, Pickle Inspector reaches into the snow around him and pulls back twisted red stick. He holds it in front of him, twisting it between his fingers. His hands are white and blue.  
“It used to be a rose.”  
Droog comes up to him, puts his hand on Pickle Inspector’s shoulder.   
“It used to be a rose. A rose.”  
Droog takes hold of his shoulder, pulls him up onto his feet.  
“I’m sorry.” Pickle Inspector shivers before him, dropping the rose.  
“Come inside.” Droog leads him back towards the house.   
They get inside and Sponsor sees to getting Pickle Inspector warmed up.   
Somehow she knows not to ask any more of Droog.   
He doesn’t see Pickle Inspector again until that night. In all the worrying over Pickle Inspector Droog was able to find a hiding place and stay there until the house was dark and quiet.   
His stomach growls as he climbs the stairs to the room he and the Inspector share. He steps carefully down the hall, finds the door and eases it open, then shuts it quietly behind him.   
He slips off his shoes, pulls off his suit jacket and pulls his shirt over his head.  
It’s cold in the room, colder than he would’ve guessed.  
He reaches the bed, runs a hand along the comforter and pulls it back enough for him to climb in. The bed is warm, hot even, and as Droog burrows towards the center he’s relieved. It’s good to know that somewhere in whatever frozen world he lives in there’s at least one warm spot.  
His hands find Pickle Inspector’s hair, and his fingers tangle in it as he reaches down, twisting himself to get closer and closer. He feels along the Inspector’s cheekbones, his ears, down his neck to his shoulders. His chest, his sides, up his arms and down to his hands.   
There’s murmuring, uncertain little sounds that get trapped in the sheets around them. Droog explores and feels and pulls, dragging both of them closer together until he can tangle their legs and get his arms around the Inspector.  
He presses the other man’s face into the side of his neck, runs his fingers through that white blonde hair, and feels him shiver.  
Lips part on his neck and the Inspector’s breath is hot and wet.  
“I thought--I thought you--you didn’t want me--”  
Droog hushes him, curling his fingers in that hair and breathing low. He turns his head enough to kiss Pickle Inspector’s temple, his forehead, before he presses his face back into the muscle between his neck and shoulder.   
Spidery hands move along his back, finding familiar holds and moving up and down to discover new ones. The Inspector’s legs move, twisting higher against Droog’s and tightening.   
He holds on for dear life, as if the motion of Droog’s breathing alone could throw him off.  
“I love you,” he says, desperate against Droog’s ear. It’s hot enough under the covers that Droog feels himself start to sweat. He holds the Inspector tighter. “I love you I love you I love you.”  
Droog pets his hair, his back, breathing low.   
“I know,” he says, “I know.”  
\----  
He wakes up to find Pickle Inspector still wrapped around him, running the very tips of his fingers over Droog’s hair to straighten any strains that there skewed the night before.  
He watches through his lashes, feeling Pickle Inspector steady, sleepy breathing, the minute movements of his muscles, and the warmth being tangled up like this brings. He dozes under the Inspector hand.  
“Will it, will it be like it was?”  
“No,” Droog sighs against his shoulder. “It won’t.”   
Pickle Inspector nods.  
“Alright.”  
“We’ll make it work,” Droog pulls the Inspector closer, squeezing them together and interrupting his petting.  
The Inspector moves just enough to get some air.  
“We’ll try,” he murmurs.  
“We’ll try.” Droog nods.  
They dress and pack, eat and prepare to get out on the road. Sponsor tells them that they can, in fact, get through the country roads that lead back to the highway. The car has been dug out of the snow. Droog puts the bags in the backseat while Pickle Inspector hugs his aunt, holds on longer than Droog thinks he should, and exchanges a teary goodbye with her.  
She kisses his cheeks and his forehead, hugs him again and waves from the porch, wrapped up in her shawl until they lose sight of her in the trees.  
The drive back through Taloule is silent, and when they get back on the highway Droog looks over to find Pickle Inspector fast asleep, bundled up in his coat, gloves, and they scarf they used to share.  
Droog knows the way home.   
He cruises down the road, alone but for the few other intrepid travelers who don’t mind braving black ice.  
As he drives he thinks of the big house, the trimmed ivy, the out of season roses and the big front door. As Sponsor stood waving them off he had seen something that had eluded him at first glance.   
On the door hung a wreath, thick and piney green, with snowflakes still clutching the red ribbon laced around it.


End file.
